Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

OneWord 365

This year will be different

It’s a third of the way through January, and I already feel like I’m doing it wrong. Doing what wrong, I’m not sure. It’s just that I have this sense that I’m somehow squandering the new year. That a new start should feel more productive, more monumental. While I appreciate the opportunity for renewal that comes with the start of a new year, I kind of hate all the pressure that tags along. We’re “supposed to” dream big and plan and set goals, none of which are bad things, but how can any one day of the year hold that much expectation?

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that the planning, the dreaming, the goal-setting is a constant process of re-evaluation. We can make our plans, dream our dreams and set our goals, but life often has other plans for us and if we don’t hold those things loosely, we can easily convince ourselves we’ve failed if we don’t achieve what we set out to do at the beginning of the year.

It’s the bigness of the dreams, goals and plans that bothers me right now. A dream, goal or plan doesn’t have to be big to be good.

—

I spent half of last year dealing with an ovarian cyst. Between the discovery of it, the surgery to remove it and the recovery from surgery, it was five months, not all of it active, but the issue was looming in the background. In the fall, before surgery, my health took a scary turn–high blood pressure and extreme anxiety. I had been taking on too much and not taking care of myself.

Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash

I was squeezing extra work–writing, reading–into the margins of my day. I felt really productive most days, but all that constant working was taking a toll on my body. The month of recovery after my surgery left me with quite a shock. I couldn’t do all the things I normally could do. I rested. I read. I watched shows and movies.

And I thought about what needed to change for this year. What settled in my soul is a hard statement to put into words.

The truth is: I want to do less this year.

(There. I said it. And I survived. Even now, though, I want to erase it.)

Do less? Who wants to do less? Who makes that their goal?

I am fully aware that we live in a world where more is the word that grabs our attention. Every advertisement convinces us we need more of this or that. More savings. More stuff. More money. More, more, more.

I’ve been wrestling with this plan to do less for months, and I’m still not completely comfortable with it. Will people think I’m lazy if I say I want to scale back and do less? Will I appear apathetic or uncaring when I say “no” to some things?

Honestly, I don’t care what people think about this plan. I have no proof, but I think this elusive quest for more is killing us, and I’m over it.

I didn’t know how much I needed the break from everything until I was on medical leave, and it’s almost embarrassing that it took a medical reason to force my rest. The pace of life slowed way down for me in November, and I tried hard not to let it ramp up again in December. Fortunately for me, my body wouldn’t allow me to jump back in to life as it was before the surgery, so I had to ease into it.

Now it’s January and the pressure to “get back to normal” is creeping back in. But I don’t want to go back to normal. Not the normal that had me sobbing in two doctors’ offices with terrifying blood pressure numbers and prescription anxiety medication in my hands.

Friends, that’s not normal. It can’t be. (Please don’t hear me say that anxiety is not normal or that it’s somehow wrong to take medication. That’s not what I’m saying, not at all.)

As much as I might want to do more, this year, I’m focusing on doing less.

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You might know that I choose a word every year–something to center my life on for the year, a word that becomes my focus.

Last year’s word was “intention.” It was a good word, a good plan for the year, forcing me to think ahead about some things and not just drift through my life. I didn’t write much specifically about that word, but I do feel like it changed me and helped me grow throughout the year.

For this year, I pondered a couple of words that went along with the theme of less doing, more being, words like rest and return, but the one that keeps speaking to my soul is “abide.”

It’s a bit archaic, the meaning I’m going for. It’s the idea of living or dwelling with. It’s not quite the opposite of intention, although it feels a little like it is. I don’t mean to accept whatever comes my way or tolerate bad behavior or anything like that. I just need to reconnect with this inner sense of being.

Apart from what I do and produce in this life, I want to abide as who I am at my core. And to do that, I have to strip off all the expectations that what I do, what I produce, makes me who I am.

It is no small task.

One way I’ve started implementing the idea of abiding is by letting the morning hours be leisurely. Last year, I was waking up around 5:30 a.m. trying to write or otherwise do creative work for an hour or so before I felt everyone had to start getting ready for work and school. A lot of mornings, I would be frustrated because my kids wake up early, and I wanted to protect that hour. I did get some things done, but I always felt a bit rushed in the morning.

Since my health issues, I reformed the morning hours. I still wake up around 5:30 a.m. but the first little bit is for spiritual practices. I listen to a short prayer program called Pray As You Go, and I read the daily passages offered in the Book of Common Prayer. These are things I had abandoned in favor of productivity last year, and while I don’t hold any expectation for these practices (i.e. if I start my day with prayer and Bible reading, the rest of the day will go well!), they do help me fight the urge to do.

When I finish those two practices, I make coffee and breakfast. I read for leisure. And then I start getting ready for work. It’s a rhythm that’s working for me right now, and I do feel better able to start the day on a more centered note.

—

The temptation, with a word like “abide,” will be to let some things slide. I am letting go of some things this year, but my hope is to create more space for the things I feel are more important. For example, I’m planning to take one afternoon/evening a month to leave work and head to a coffee shop and focus on my writing until I’m ready to come home. I will sacrifice some family time to do this, but if I want to accomplish my writing goals, I have to.

In other ways, I’m starting over. Like with running. I’m back to the plan I used when I first started running, if only to ease my body back into the habit. My muscles remember, though, and as badly as I want to just run and keep running, I’m forcing myself to stick to the running and walking plan for now. Last year, I ran five 5k races which was not something I planned to do. But I consider it a great accomplishment. Last year, I wanted to try a 4-mile race for the first time, but my husband got sick and I couldn’t follow through with that.

This year, I want to run a half-marathon with my husband–13 miles to celebrate 13 years of marriage. This is a goal that terrifies me, especially since I’m practically starting over with running. Maybe that doesn’t sound like it fits with the “do less” plan. It is probably the biggest goal I have this year, and it will take discipline and focus. I will have to do less of other things to stick to my training plan.

—

Forward. Forward. Forward. 

It’s the way we’re always told to be moving. To grow is to advance, and I don’t think it’s always wrong, but I don’t think we give enough credit to the idea of circling back. Of returning. Of starting again. Sometimes we need to return to the places we’ve been, to walk a circle instead of a straight line, to revisit a place, physical or mental or spiritual, that we think we’ve moved on from. And we need to see it as part of the process, instead of as negative progress or regression.

If you find yourself in a place of returning, a place of circling, a place of starting over, please know that you’re not doing it wrong. More isn’t always better. Forward isn’t always the best direction. Growth and change can happen when you’re standing still (just ask the trees). It can happen when the world is cold and dark (just ask the seeds planted in spring).

Whatever you choose to focus on this year, may it bring you joy and peace.

One word leads to another {A OneWord365 wrap-up and announcement}

I’ve been choosing one word to guide my year since 2013.

That first year was “release,” a time of letting go, and it was followed a year later by “enjoy.” The year I was meant to enjoy the life in front of me didn’t turn out that way exactly because I realized something along the way. And that led to my 2015 word, which was “whole.” That was a winding road full of unexpected twists, and at the end of the year I felt undone more than done, which I think was the whole point, pun intended.

Which brings us to 2016 and the year that is almost ended. My word this year was “present” and I always begin the year with high hopes.

My goal this year was to be more awake to the life right in front of me, to not distract myself all the time with escapist fiction or dulled senses. And this year, like it was for so many, was full of opportunity to feel deeply. And that is as painful as it sounds.

This year, I faced a multi-week back injury at the beginning of the year that reduced my world to one room of the house and counting the number of steps to the bathroom. I zoned out with Netflix because I literally couldn’t go anywhere, but I became more aware of my immediate surroundings. It was an unintentional introduction to being present.

For Lent, I took a break from reading fiction, which is too often an escape for me, and I had hard time going back to books that are purely entertaining and not challenging in some way. I still read fiction, but it’s different for me now.

In the middle of the year, my grandfather died, and I felt ALL THE GRIEF of loss. I cried like I’ve never cried before. Publicly. Unashamedly. There was a time when I might have tried to fight it. To hide the pain. But I let it go. I still am.

Then there was the election. And the war in Syria. And other people’s grief and loss. I felt it right along with them, sometimes crying for seemingly no reason but later pinpointing it to taking on others’ emotions.

One night, I clearly remember feeling so much sadness and loss, and I really wanted to drink a glass or two of wine to dull what I was feeling. But I chose not to. Instead, I let myself feel. And I was better for it.

Which leads me to the word I want to live for 2017.

See, this last feature of being present, this caring about other people’s pain and losses is something I still need to work on. Most of the time, I am so focused on my own troubles and problems that I turn off my caring for other people because I don’t think my heart can handle it.

What I learned from being present this year (and from seeing the movie Inside Out) is that feeling something–even sadness, even pain–is an important part of life.

I have long admired this quote by C.S. Lewis because I struggle with the eventual pain of loving and losing. It goes like this:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

I don’t want my heart to harden because when it does, I become someone I hate. I have no pity or compassion for people. I reek of bitterness about my own circumstances in life. I shut down, like a turtle receding into its shell so nothing can hurt it.

That is not how I want to live life.

Knowing now what I do about what a year can bring, especially when I choose to focus on a word and how it will eventually change me, I am nervous and scared.

But the word I need this year, the only word that makes sense to me is this:

I have high expectations for myself and others, so I want to be tender, gracious with myself. I am learning to set high and challenging goals, yes, but to be kind to myself when I don’t meet those goals or take the steps easy as they come and to not beat myself up or call myself names. I can’t do it all. I can’t control it all. So, I need to be tender towards myself.

And I need to keep my heart on the soft side. It most certainly will get bruised. Maybe even punctured. But I’ve lived enough days with the impenetrable heart to know that loving and caring, even if it means losing and hurting, is worth more than a heart that feels nothing.

Hate is in excess these days. There are people and groups I want to hate because they are hateful. But more hate won’t solve anything. I wrestle with this, too. To be tender is not the same as “going soft,” though. I think certain behaviors, actions, beliefs, circumstances require a toughness. And I still want that to be there. But I don’t think I can be only tough. In fact, I think I need the toughness and the tenderness to work together. I’m sure I’ll have more to think about with that as the year progresses.

I just know that when my heart starts to solidify, which it started to do after the election, the tenderness is what saves me. When I’m anxious, being kind to others is an antidote. I can’t explain it, really, but I find it easier to be the opposite of whatever the prevailing emotion is. When shoppers are frantic and I’m anxious about joining them out in public, I remind myself to be patient and kind, and it helps me. When hate and fear spew from the TV, I throw myself into volunteer work with refugees and school children. It is tenderness in thinking of others and giving my time to them that keeps my rising anger and frustration from bubbling into a steaming outburst.

I don’t know what else I will learn about tenderness and being tender this year. But I know that I will learn about myself and God in the process. Because He, too, is tender, despite what we sometimes want to think.

Despite all the unexpected turns, I have not regretted this choice of focusing on one word for an entire year. It has changed me more than any New Year’s resolution ever has.

Won’t you give it a try this year? The word is totally personal to you and your circumstances, and sometimes it seems the word chooses me before I can choose it. Give it some thought. And let me know what you pick. It’s going to be a transformative year.